Posted on 08/07/2006 6:58:08 AM PDT by Hydroshock
CHICAGO - The staff at his neighborhood hardware store can spot John Carter from a distance.
He's the slightly befuddled guy who often comes in declaring, "I have no idea what I'm doing. Can you at least get me through tonight?"
The 26-year-old Chicagoan, who's been slowly rehabbing the condo he bought last year, is part of a generation of young homeowners who admit they often have no clue how to handle home projects.
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For them, shop class was optional. It also was more common for their parents to hire contractors, leaving fewer opportunities for them to learn basic repair skills.
With low interest rates allowing more young adults to buy property in recent years, many inexperienced homeowners are desperate for advice when the furnace goes out, the roof leaks or when a home project that seemed like a no-brainer goes terribly wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Yep, framers are a dime a dozen and the quality that is put out today is atrocious. Even many "finish" carpenters are pretty pathetic. Don't see many "Norms" out there. Everyone thinks that they or their kids have to be in management or business now-a-days. Skilled labor is hurting.
Maybe I'm just "old school" but I have a hard time trusting a carpenter that doesn't seem to own a hand saw.
I haven't read all the thread and someone may have mentioned this. This also applies to BB, Gen X and Y women as well - - basic cooking skills (cooking from scratch), basic sewing (how to mend a hem or sew on a button), basic gardening (raising veggies), little things on how to bake bread from scratch, basic first aid, and small repairs around the house (patching with plaster, how to fix a too-big screw hole), etc. Just basic "survival skills" stuff.
My mom, 84, brought her own toolkit to the marriage. Good thing, too. My dad was a total dunce when it came to any kind of home repair. He's been gone a couple of years, but she still laughs that she has to turn the kitchen switch to the "off" position to turn on the overhead light as dear ol' dad installed it upsidedown - -
LOL, since I am no longer married, I think those rules will work just fine!
There are no more real carpenters (ok, well hrdly), merely assemblers. Everything is trussed, paralams, pre-hung fingerjointed high-speed crap.
About the only jobs I really hate are the finicky painting (like widows) and pulling cement. If I EVER have to pour a floor again I'll hire it out. That's HARD work!
I generally don't care for brush painting at all (grew up in a body shop - put a paint gun in my hand any day). I've pretty well had my fill of concrete work, too - especially if it involves a wheelbarrow.
"Why don't you tell me what credentials constitute an expert?"
One place to start is, only hire out of the Yellow Pages.
-"I will repair what your husband fixed."-
Exactly! My sister thinks she can install ceiling fans, so what we're left with are ceiling fans you can only set at low speed because a higher speed makes them wobble all over the place.
I was LOLing and then realized it was your post!
You hit that one on the head...
Yeah. The drive belt slipped off the track on my Maytag Dryer. I spent two hours trying to restring it before consulting Google. I found a site with step by step pictures.
I suspect it's because there are so many other, less dirty, jobs out there that high school boys can do, they don't WANT to do construction. They don't see the value in learning the skills.
I dunno about that. Most mornings on my way to work, my Sig is mere inches away from my venti frappucino from Starbucks. So I wouldn't bet too heavily on that inverse ratio theory.
Some basic tools, a couple of good DIY books and practice is all it really takes. Nobody is born with these skills.
Same with autos.
I always put plugs in just barely hand tight. Maybe an eigth of a turn beyond that. Plugs are threaded so flat that the chances of them coming lose, and then spontaneously rotating themselves out of the heads are probably as close to zero as you can get!
I love doing engine work and working around the house. Except plumbing, and I hate that only because you often have to work in very confined space in very contorted positions. But today I just finished staining my deck (I put new flooring on my deck two years ago and kept telling myself "I'll let it weather one winter and stain it next summer..."). Two years ago, I and a contractor also put a metal roof on my place.
A little while back, I had a pinhole leak on the input pipe to my water heater, so I fixed that and then a couple days later put a 90% shutoff into the pipe about four feet before the heater.
So I'm always doing stuff around the place and have quite a large collection of tools. It is very rewarding to have a job well done.
Here are some of the wonders of repairing a "used" home. To put it in perspective, the previous 3 owners essentially sat on the appreciation and did little else except when warranted by emergencies and preparation for sale:
= Tiled bathroom shelf one inch above top of toilet tank
= Complete lack of french drains (on an adobe, expansive soil hillside in Cali)
= No retaining wall in crawl space, only a big cut into the dirt
= No garbage disposal (believe or not they had one of those faucet fed dishwashers from the 60s)
= Totally overwatered wrong areas of yard with major fungal growth experiment
= Post in garage hit by drunken wife, knocked off mount, never repaired or replaced
= 2 out of 3 front lights disconnected from AC
Etc .... a "contractor's special" - LOL!
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